


Eyes Turned to Eden

by Katreal



Category: Homestuck, Homestuck (Epilogues)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Metaphysical nonsense, Mind Manipulation, Reunion, Robots, Sad Ending, The Homestuck Epilogues, The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat, Ult Dirk is Everywhere because of course he is, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, mind the warning, whether or not it sticks is up to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 15:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30091308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katreal/pseuds/Katreal
Summary: Their life together was nothing more pleasant dream...one that's faded with time, distance, and a determination to see this path through the end.The Light illuminates many paths, and leaves open bittersweet possibilities.People change and people stay the same. Round and round we go.Written for the 'Robots of Homestuck' Zine.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Rosebot & Dirk Strider, Rosebot/Kanaya Maryam
Kudos: 5





	Eyes Turned to Eden

It’s the end of another beautiful day on Deltritus. 

The sun is shining. The strangely shaped flora is blooming. If you wanted to stop and smell the flowers as it were, you could analyze the aerosols bouncing around in your nasal cavity and likely come up with a reasonable approximation.

A beautiful moment, with the sky painted in hues foreign to everything you’d ever known, for self-reflection. If only you weren’t so terribly _busy._

Busy doing what, you ask? Tsk, tsk, so forward are we? Already asking about plans and plots while you still haven’t so much as indulged in the usual ritual of contrived narratively contained self introduction. 

A goddess of light and fortune, wrapped in a husk of metal and clad in silk, stands before the mouth of a cave. The mark of a dying day carves its presence out behind her, shadow scoring the landscape, the claw of some monstrous beast gouging into stone as if it were soft, pliable earth.

After leaving your body behind. After years on a ship with your father-dearest and a mad-woman. After months and centuries meticulously creating a civilization only to doom it. Birthing child after child from that lab, fauna, sentients--you left your mark on them all, even if motherhood never looked good on you. After _everything_ your name is still Rose Lalonde. And you _know_ today is the day.

Molded lips don’t move, even as you turn your face to the sky. Towards where distant stars are caught somewhere between a thought and reality. Where a _glint_ of light continues its approach. Days now. Hours. Perhaps even minutes. So little time remaining, and no Knight at hand to give you more. In fact, he would likely be predisposed to take it away from you. Turn it back. Start anew.

No.

Never-sleeping eyes have been fixated on this future since you started on this path. Prodded, perhaps. Manipulated, definitely. But you are Light and Light is Truth and burns the image into your mind. The mind made of electricity and circuits and logical algorithms and the mind trapped in a wasted husk buried beneath the earth controlling it all.

Your eyes, lovingly shaped metal, reinforced glass, and an expressionless stare that you couldn’t change even if you wanted to, have been open for a long time. Pried open to the maddening totality of existence and left to burn in its Light.

At least, you know you’ve walked this road willingly.

Smudged shadows against the blue light from one of Deltritus’ three moons. You step up, step free, pressing in around you as the resident gas giant sinks beyond an invisible horizon. 

She’s waiting for you.

The light in the darkness creeps, glowing softly from the palest of grey skin. Green on yellow follows you warily, fang touched lips, turning for a split second into a frown. 

Some part of you always hopes she’ll break. That she’ll run to you and throw her arms around your metal frame and that you’ll fall into that pit of love you left behind years and a lifetime ago.

But that is a childish hope, a holdover from so many Roses who died too young. The ones who never outlived their youthful flames are tempered by the cumulative centuries of knowledge telling you that Kanaya won’t bend. 

Had you articulating lips, would they be curling? A wistful smile. A resigned grimace. Or peaceful acceptance. Perhaps some mix of all three? The author in you murmurs that it would depend on the mood you would like to set, the tone.

How _would_ you write this encounter, if you had a pen?

“Rose.”

What should be more familiar to you than your name on your wife’s lips? 

Yet, it carries with it a disconnect. Interpreted differently through technology and signals before it’s repackaged and shipped to the nebulous ghost that haunts the circuitry keeping you anchored in this world. 

You would smile, you think.

“Kanaya.” 

You can see the way her lips tighten.

“I have had three years to think of exactly what I would say to you, but--faced with the opportunity--I find myself at a loss.” Pale, _radiant_ fingers curl around a small tube. Eyes tight with pain. With a flick of that wrist, teeth would roar free. “Perhaps we will simply have to table this discussion for later.”

“I think now is the perfect time to have it, actually.” The lilting, digitized replica of your voice contains the _perfect_ amount of sarcasm. “Ask me _anything_ Kanaya. Surely you’d like one answer to feed your burning curiosity?” 

Your wands spark, adding another source of light to this shifting mass of nothingness, because the setting doesn’t matter. None of it does. This is a Nexus. A crossroads. A point you have looked down so many times, evaluating.

“Come now, don’t be shy.”

“I believe I can infer enough from the visual information provided.” Pale knuckles clench. You can feel her teetering on the edge. If you can just--reach out and _push._

“Don’t you like it?”

Do a little twirl. A curtsy with your robes. Highlight the differences. The cold metal. _Everything._

“I think it was a much needed upgrade, myself. You can’t imagine how _limiting_ a flesh suit is, even a godly one.” 

_ Tug her heart free. _

“What has happened to you?”

She asks.

You know that isn’t what she means.

Correction.

“What has he done to you?”

“Nothing.” Yes. You definitely think you would be smiling now. “Nothing, except grant me a garden in which to flourish. Plucked free of the parched and barren soil of mundanity. I have partaken of the Forbidden Fruit and learned the truth of Eden, and it is that the world is So Much Larger beyond its confines.”

Your hand sweeps out as the surroundings ripple, banishing your wands with a thought. Light flows from you, refracting, casting rolling hills and jagged mountains and spiraling cities as a projection against nothing but metal and stone. Features that didn’t exist on this barren hunk of dirt and detritus not even a few _weeks_ prior. “You had your dream, Kanaya. You raised your Brood and they flourished. Do you begrudge me mine? This world is my oyster, my canvas, the beginning of the _magnum opus_ I was never able to write.”

You stop, savoring the ringing silence, the sound of your words reverberating and bouncing as if penned in. Meant only for the audience before you. 

“We are _gods._ We were never meant for Eden.”

The silence drips between you two with the consistency of blood long since spilled, but never quite dried. Thick and coagulated. 

“You chose to leave then?” 

_ Yes. _

You don’t even stop to consider another answer.

You step forward.

“Of course. It’s insulting that you think otherwise.”

You’re close. Too close. A warmth blossoms, remembered, spreading through electronic synapses, as you reach up and place a cold metal hand against her cheek, “It was a lovely dream, Kanaya. But I had to wake up, one way or another.”

An undead hand captures yours. Green painted claws curling against the black of your body suit. Digging in. You can feel it as a pressure. A change in the condition of your chassis, even if a small one. The sensors replacing your skin register the warmth, seeping as it is through that radiant skin. 

The strength of a rainbow drinker tugs you closest. On the edge of an embrace. You allow it. Gliding forward on featureless stone, a dancer following her choreographed performance. 

“I cannot believe that.” 

“Why not?” You tilt your head up, unmoving lips, unblinking red eyes staring impassively into hers. Dirk gave you an extra inch or two, but even so Kanaya maintains her advantage in that arena. She’s so close. Even if you have the capability to discern it now, it is your memory that provides the indescribable aroma that once had filled your heart with peace. You reach out and curl your other hand around hers. She’s caught one, you, the other. “This is how it must be.”

“No.” She corrects you, like a child, dismissing you. “This is how Dirk wanted it to be.”

Had you had articulating eyes you would roll them. “It couldn’t be my decision, no, surely not. It couldn’t be that something rated higher on my priorities other than our post-marital bliss. I had thought you understood.”

You recall that phone call with perfect clarity. Dirk handing you a phone you could barely hold. The relief that had washed through you at Kanaya’s words, reaffirming the certainty that this was the only way forward. For you. For her. For them all.

The claws bite down. Tearing even the alchemically reinforced fabric, scratching against the outer layer of your finish. “You _must_ be aware of his abilities. The way he can twist your thoughts. To make you believe things that you would not. Do things that you would not. I would _never_ have let you go.”

“It was a dream we couldn’t afford to live.” You pull away, tugging your hand free with more force than you likely needed to. Father dearest wouldn’t be happy with you, would he? Even with the perfect poker face, even with voice modulation, you never could quite manage Dirk’s level of projected ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ Why would you want to? There’s no need for you to hide some perfectly useful emotions. If hurt or anger could be gleaned in the darkness through your gestures, all the better. “It could be that in my illness I saw the deterioration of all that I hold dear. If you give Dirk all the credit, you deny my agency. My _sacrifice_. It was not an easy decision to leave you, I admit, but I could stay on that planet no more than I could let you interrupt our work here. I would hope you of all people would respect _my_ decisions.”

“I would respect your decisions if they really _were_ your decisions.” You see hairline fractures in that cool mask. Emotions bottled up, three long years worth of nights staring out at the stars, trying to determine exactly where everything fell apart. You can see her heart through those cracks, beating. All it would take is a little nudge. “I did _not_ make that phone call. I have gone over exactly what thoughts led me down that path and I cannot claim them to be my own! I _know_ you Rose! If you had such worries and fears you would have spoken of them to me and we could have devised a strategy to combat them together.” 

“No.” You say cooly. “You clearly did not know me.”

Not anymore.

You turn away.

“Go home, Kanaya.”

It’s enough. 

You aren’t allowed to doubt.

Not after everything you’ve given up.

You aren’t allowed to feel that anger and pain bubbling up deep within your distant body and translated through your soul.

You cannot see it, but she would turn away. She should shake her head. Hurting. You’ve pushed her away. Definitively rejected her. Rejected everything there once was, leaving it back in the past where it belongs. She would respect your decision--

“The prince of heart must be stopped.” Her voice rings out behind you, reverberating with purpose in a way that makes you wish to grit teeth you do not have. “I will get through to you, Rose. Even if I have to go through him to get there. You will understand once this is all over. This--what you are doing--this is not right. None of it is. _You_ are not right. If you cannot see that, then you are more blinded by your own hubris than I ever could have expected.”

“We’re preserving our history, our legacy, our very _existence_ with our work. The propagation of reality is worth _everything._ ” A flick of the hand. Dismissal. “Everything we have, had, or could have, means _nothing,_ if casualty dissolves beneath our love drunk feet.”

You’ve Seen what happens when you fail.

A quick pirouette has you with your wand, singular, pointed at her chest, holding up the small, inconsequential object you’d slipped out of her grip during your intimate moment. “I will not hesitate if you interfere.”

There is barely a meter between you. A couple steps. An arm’s length.

Back down.

Go home, Kanaya.

Green eyes flick to her empty hand. You watch them harden, returning to you as the lipstick-ne-chainsaw crumples like paper and is tossed away into the darkness. The shadows of your light fade into an all consuming void. Everything narrows to a point. You and her.

You know that look.

But again, three years. 

Perhaps you don’t know much of anything, either, if you think she’s leaving without you.

She doesn’t need a weapon to be dangerous.

It helps that, despite your assurances, you _hesitate._

Wands crackle. Claws rip and bite into even hardened metal. She isn’t trying to hurt you. Clearly trying to incapacitate you. Aiming for _anything_ that could get you to stop.

You won’t stop.

You can’t stop.

You started down this path three years ago and you have to see it through.

Blast after blast. It’s not that your impeccable aim is off. It’s not that you wait a hair too long so she can easily sweep away. It’s that she’s too fast. It’s that her first chainsaw-less strike gouged into your thigh, throwing off your balance so that you can’t properly get into a battle rhythm.

If you don’t then it was all for _nothing._

It’s an eternity. Your wands end up rolling off into the darkness when she breaks the servos in your wrist. Knees buckle as those torn connections spark and struggle to keep energy and commands moving.

Oil and lubricant smatters across her face, a shimmering rainbow that draws your attention. The light cast from her skin refracts through the thick liquid. A lover’s hands cupping your face. Thumb brushing gently against metal skin. 

You’ve stopped moving.

You can’t stop moving. You have to--

The thought drifts off. Incomplete.

There’s a hardness in her face that you’ve only seen once before. When you stood on the edge of finality, against an enemy that could overpower you both. You’d leaned in for a kiss then. Neither willing to say what you both were thinking.

Your surroundings flicker as the connections start to fray. Pulled free. Stairs dig into the fading sensations you can feel in your knees before those flicker and die and you can’t feel anything at all. Nothing but the struggling signals attempting to convey information back to a worthless meatsack.

Your head lolls because you can’t seem to hold it up anymore. 

Stairs.

You’re wrapped in orange and golds. Your shoes don’t slip free. There isn’t wine on your breath. You don’t have lungs to breathe.

This Kanaya. Older. Harder. Lifts you up and leans in even as your vision dims.

“I will save you Rose. Even from a danger you refuse to see.”

Lips brush your face. 

Her Light is the last thing you see before your Eyes close for the first time in years and the darkness swallows you.

“I swear it.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of two pieces written for the ['Robots of Homestuck' Zine](https://robotsofhszine.tumblr.com/post/645813885941743616/after-some-long-wait-with-troubled-maintenance)! Please do check it out, as there is a companion art piece to go along with it!
> 
> The second one features Jane Crocker and stars Lil' Seb and can be found on my profile.
> 
> ...gotta say. Never did expect myself to write an _epilogue_ fic of all things.


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